Alphabet’s Erich Schmidt To Chair A US Department Of Defense Board

Corporate entities are increasingly being involved by Governments in matters of national and international importance. Yet another example of the same is Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, who has now been appointed to chair a newly formed Department of Defense board.

Christened Defense Innovation Advisory Board, the committee has been formed with the aim of improving the department in areas associated with technology and management, with help from people in the private sector.

As per Pentagon’s Press Secretary, Peter Cook,

Just as the Defense Business Board provides advice to the department on best business practices from the private sector, the Defense Innovation Advisory Board will provide advice on the best and latest practices in innovation that the department can emulate.

Some of the other areas that the board will seek to advise the DoD may include rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, the use of mobile and cloud applications, and organizational information sharing.

However, the board will keep away from military matters — or at least, that’s what they said.

The decision to choose Eric, who heads one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world certainly makes sense. Eric, along with Defense Secretary Ash Carter will be choosing the rest of the board members.

Members will represent a cross-section of America’s most innovative industries, drawing on technical and management expertise from Silicon Valley and beyond.

It will be interesting to see if the committee ends up consisting of a member for Apple or not, after its recent tiff with the government. Apple certainly qualifies to send a couple, if we talk about innovation and technology while choosing members.